Federal agents are digging deeper into business practices at the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, the nonprofit advocacy group that nearly dissolved earlier this year and is now on the hunt for its fourth administrator in recent months.

UCAN hired a forensic expert to comply with a fresh federal subpoena. She collected up to six computers from the Midway area office Monday that previously were used by former Executive Director Michael Shames.

The San Diego nonprofit was organized in the early 1980s to fight utility companies on behalf of ratepayers, and sought court dissolution amid allegations of secret bank accounts and other irregularities involving Shames. He says all the allegations are without merit.

The FBI interviewed Chairman Kendall Squires for up to six hours late last month. Agents visited UCAN offices two days later. Squires declined to discuss what the investigators wanted to know or what he told them.

“I answered every question they asked,” Squires said.

Charles Langley, the longtime UCAN analyst who was one of two employees to raise questions about the group’s finances last year, said investigators turned up at the UCAN office Sept. 20.

“I recognized them as FBI agents because one of them interviewed me last year,” Langley said.

The FBI does not confirm or discuss its investigations.

Another issue coming up at UCAN in the wake of Shames’ tenure is lawsuits that he was involved in, outside of his official role at UCAN.

One case was litigated by Robert Fellmeth, the University of San Diego law professor who helped Shames establish UCAN in the 1980s and who has now joined the UCAN board.

Shames was a plaintiff in the 2007 case, a class-action complaint against seven car-rental firms accused of colluding with state officials to fix prices.

In May, the parties reached an agreement that awards plaintiffs $5.87 million if it is approved by the judge at a hearing later this month.

The Center for Public Interest Law, the USD law project Fellmeth oversees, requested just under $680,000 in fees for legal work related to the case, records show.

Squires said the UCAN board is reviewing a potential conflict of interest between Fellmeth’s legal work with Shames and his UCAN board service.

UCAN’s highest-profile role in the community has been suing on behalf of consumers against defendants including Cingular Wireless, the San Diego city water department and San Diego Gas & Electric. But Fellmeth said there is no relation between UCAN and the car-rental case, and thus no conflict.

“Michael Shames was simply one of the named class representatives, by virtue of the fact that he rented a car from a California airport in 2007 – which, obviously, has nothing to do with UCAN,” Fellmeth said.

The advocacy group is no longer being managed by Kim Malcolm, the former California Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge who was introduced as UCAN’s new executive director in May.

Malcolm converted her position to consultant status in August amid concerns of personal liability. She plans to leave for good later this week.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do mission-related work, which is what I came to UCAN to do,” she said about her decision to leave. “I’m doing a lot of administrative work and addressing a lot of past problems.”

Malcolm’s tenure at UCAN was strained from the beginning, in part because Shames remained on the payroll after being replaced and because so many basic documents were missing from agency files.

“UCAN’s role is important to San Diego,” she said. “I hope it reaches a point in the near future where it has the resources and the wherewithal to do the regulatory work it has for so long.”

The consumer watchdog organization filed for court-supervised dissolution in Superior Court early this year after Langley and UCAN staff attorney David Peffer reported that Shames accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses without telling the board. They also disclosed a series of secret accounts and unexplained transactions.

Shames, who resigned from UCAN in June, formed a rival consumer group he calls San Diego Consumers’ Action Network and is now seeking to be paid $330 an hour as an “intervenor” in a pending rate case.

A judge in the spring ordered the agency into receivership and put all UCAN business in the hands of a short-term management consultant. The receivership ended in May and Malcolm was introduced as the new chief executive.

Squires said the board has identified two potential successors, although no decision has yet been reached.